Inspired by the prompt: “Rotting flowers can still smell sweet…”

In a cottage where ivy kissed broken stone,

Lived Elira, the woman who gardened alone.

Not with tulips in bloom or roses bright red,

But with petals half-fallen and nearly dead.

She plucked them at dusk with a reverent grace,

Each wilted bloom held like a sacred face.

Pressed into oils, steeped in old jars,

Whispers of sorrow sealed under stars.

Her scents were strange — not of springtime delight,

But of love that once lingered on cold lips at night.

The villagers scoffed at her perfumes of pain,

Yet wore them in silence and wept in the rain.

A boy named Coren, heart bruised and bare,

Brought lilies once meant for a girl unaware.

“Make her remember,” he pleaded in shame,

“Make her recall when she once said my name.”

Elira just nodded, her fingers so kind,

Turning the lilies with heartbreak in mind.

She watched them decay till their fragrance grew deep,

A scent full of longing and secrets to keep.

On the eighth day, she handed him gold in a glass,

Said, “Some things bloom brightest when left in the past.

The sweetest of smells can come from regret —

A love that once lived, and won’t let you forget.”

Now Coren walks with his heart stitched tight,

Wearing wilted perfume through each silent night.

Not for the girl, nor the past incomplete,

But to remember: rot can still smell sweet.